Traction Avant drivabilty improvements

The Traction Avant had a number of small issues that were impacting the overall drivability of the car.   The car is now much nicer to drive after resolving them.

• The original engine driven fuel pump had been bypassed by a very noisy electric pump
• There was severe vibration on braking
• Front suspension was worn
• Valves were out of adjustment on #2 causing poor running and smoke at idle
• The gearchange mechanism would occasionally get ‘stuck’
• The gearbox had a bad oil leak

All the work on the car for these jobs was done by Jason at Pallas Motors.  I was able to source all the parts I needed from CCOCA, which makes keeping an older car like the traction on the road much easier.

The traction was originally fitted with a mechanical fuel pump that is driven by the engine.  For one reason or another this had been bypassed by a very noisy electric pump.   These are often fitted because starting can be hard with the mechanical pump, but the pump is fitted with a primer lever to pump additional fuel up the carby if the car has been sitting for a while.

The gear change rods linkages were fairly worn and these were tightened up to improve the gear change as well.

The vibration on braking turned out to be number of factors.   The front suspension was fairly worn and was partially rebuilt with upgraded upper control arm bushings.   These are uprated units that can use rubber bushings instead of the original brass.    In addition, adjustable ball joints were fitted.   The originals require shims to set up.

The next thing that was contributing to the vibration turned out to be a bent wheel.   Luckily the spare was very good so this was changed.

Finally, the valves were adjusted which fixed the low compression on #2 and the gearbox removed and new output shaft seals fitted.   This seems to have fixed the gearbox oil leak.

All in all the Traction is starting to drive as well as it looks.   Its not perfect, but its a hell of a lot better than it was before this work was done.